I'm having difficulties to understand Russell's Teapot theory.
Could someone please kind enough to explain it to me ?
Bertrand Russell explains this theory as:
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
Well, it basically mocks the fact that there could be a god, but that science will never find it. Most of the time, when science discovers something that is contradicting the bible, the koran, the torah or any other book that discribes a god of some sort (take evolution and genesis for example), religions most often say that god could be the thing that made evolution happen, which scientist just haven't observed yet (like the teapot, no one can see it, even with the best technology.).
ReplyDeleteIt basically is just the spaghetti monster, but the teapot was the original idea.